More Confidence & Freedom Around Family

Welcome to Shrink for the Shy Guy. This is the show for you. If you are sick and tired of being held back by fear, self doubt, social anxiety, shyness, anything that's stopping you from you being you. I'm going to share the most powerful tools and resources that I've been discovering over the last 15 years on my journey to eradicate social anxiety and instill confidence, first in myself and then in every single person that I meet on my journey. You're going to learn these tools and how to apply them in your life now so that you can become the most free, powerful, bold, authentic version of you. Hey, welcome to today's episode of the show. Today we're going to talk about confidence here at the end of the year in holiday situations. Maybe in retrospect, it would have been good to have this episode come out sooner as we're getting close to the end of holiday season, but there's still a bit more to go. And really, this is gonna be relevant to all different times and areas of your life, because what I talk a fair amount in this episode is family. Oh, yes, family. Now, of course, there's other holiday situations, perhaps holiday parties and other things which we might get a little bit into in this episode. But, you know, a lot of people will spend time with family around the holidays or not, and either has its challenges. And that's what we want to look at is ultimately, by the end of this episode, how you can feel more at peace, more free, more relaxed, more loved, and more confident right now. And maybe that involves something, you know, some actions you're going to go take or ways you're going to be different. And maybe it's just about seeing through the right perspectives that, you know, challenge any negative beliefs and stories about who you are, what you should be or should not be. So let's dig into that now. What are you doing around the holiday season? And it's really varied from person to person. Maybe you're going to be around family, maybe you're going to be around family virtually. Maybe you're going to spend a little bit of time. Maybe you're going to go stay with someone. Maybe you have a great relationship with your family, maybe you don't. Maybe there's certain people in your family that push your buttons. Did you know that if there's someone or someones that you spend time with in your family that cause you to feel a little crazy, you're not alone? And that's actually probably more of the norm than the exception. And so a great question would be like who, who pushes my buttons? What's going on there? And is that how it has to be? Does that person have to push my buttons? Am I like a robot and they're the programmer? What sort of liberation is possible there? And how do you navigate these different kinds of environments? How do you take care of yourself? That's what we want to look at today. So let's look at some common scenarios. Let's say you're going to be spending time with someone family wise and during this holiday season and if it's not during the holidays, maybe it's some other time. Maybe visit your parents or your in laws come or whatever. And you know, if it's easy and fluid and fun and we have a great time, then we don't think of it as a challenge. But sometimes there are other things that arise that are challenges. So what are the challenges that arise for you? You know, usually what it is is there's one person or a couple people that tend to when you're around them, when you interact with them, you feel bad. To put it into a simple category, I feel bad. And what kind of bad? Well, maybe you feel inferior, maybe you feel shame, maybe you feel judged, maybe you feel not good enough. Maybe you feel irritated, dislike aversion, frustration, maybe feel sad. Maybe you want something different for them, maybe you wish something different for them. So and this is again, this applies to any time you're around family. But let's look at that because you know, one common approach is like yeah, death's hard, sucks. You just get through it and get out on the other side. Made it, made it through that one. And that's totally one way to do it. And that might just be the best you can do at this time. And that's okay. And you know what more is possible. That's what I want to look at with you here today and from a confidence perspective, from a free, more free to be you perspective. And there's no right thing to do here. I want to clarify that this episode isn't going to go tell you. Like here's what you got to go tell your mother in law. All right? No, it's nothing very specific and directive. It's you. The goal is for you to explore what's right for you. I'm just going to share some stories and ideas about what other people have done and you can see what fits for you. What I found is that the more okay you, if you have someone that pushes your buttons, if there's a certain family member, you know, it's often maybe a parent or a grandparent or an uncle or an aunt or someone, or a cousin, someone. You see if there's someone that pushes your buttons, AKA you don't like them or something about them, you tend to see it as I don't like them because. And then you describe something they do or don't do because they interrupt all the time because they're so opinionated, because they are complaining about this or because they talk over me or gaslight me, or because they're annoying or because they're unconscious or because they are this or that and end of story, they suck. And you just gotta get through it the best you can. And this is a tricky one because if you have a history of being overly nice, you might invalidate yourself and try to override that basic aversion that you might feel. So you tell yourself like, oh, come on, you gotta be more forgiving. You're a bad son, you're a bad daughter, you're a bad sister, you're a bad brother. Come on, what's wrong with you? Just be forgiving. Just go do the the thing for them. Just agree to whatever they want. Just come on. And so you've been putting this pressure on yourself for years or decades. Extremely common if you have any niceness in your patterns there. And so it kind of locks you in, though. So you feel aversion, you try to override that. Maybe you have. And then what do you feel though? Do you feel forgiving? Do you feel loving? Do you feel joyful around this person? Or do you kind of hate them? Maybe don't use that word because it's too intense, it freaks you out. Can't hate your mom, that's terrible. You can't hate your brother. That's awful, right? But you kind of, maybe you feel strong resentment, maybe you feel aversion. It might manifest as hot resentment, like, ugh, anger. And it might be more like kind of cold, more distant, like, I don't want to talk to that person. I don't want to. I'm just going to get through this and kind of be avoidant and maybe never see them until next year. But it's the same thing being expressed now. If someone is extremely critical of you, mocking of you, verbally abusive, abrasive. I'm not saying that you need to happily receive all that. And there's an opportunity to set a boundary there, to say no there. And there's a variety of ways to say no, either directly, verbally, or sometimes by removing yourself. What often happens, I'VE seen, though, is that the person's not that intensely awful. And so you kind of feel bad because maybe you see that they're not doing it on purpose, but you're just like, oh, I guess I should. I guess I should forgive it and deal with it. But there's still this lack of clarity of how to be around them. And what I'm going to suggest is, okay, let's say we first start by validating the part of you that is blaming them for how you feel. Right? Yes, they didn't give you the attention you wanted when you were young. Yes, they were critical of you. Yes. They still maybe are, or they're distant or don't really see you, or they are manipulative or whatever. Like, yes, and that feels bad and you don't like it, and that sucks that they did that and it didn't feel right. And let's really honor that part of you. It's like, no, I don't like that. And maybe you need to spend some time really allowing that part. Because what often happens with the clients, I find, is that they never allowed that part. So that part will start to speak up. And then they try to shove it back down, get back down into the basement. Get out of here, you gross. You're a bad son. But let it out. Let it out and really feel it. Really feel that aversion and that disgust and that. Because only by really letting that be can you move on to something else. Because most people I see are stuck in this place of all that, the negative feelings and the resentment, and then they're pushing it down in the basement, and they're just locked in that place. And so if you ask them honestly about it, they're kind of like, I don't like them. And it's, like, stuck. It's frozen. But something more is possible if we can access it, if we can be willing to let yourself feel that aversion and validate yourself like, yes, that sucks that they did that. It's unfortunate. Of course you're sad, you're frustrated, you're angry, you're hurt. It's awful. And then you breathe, and then you feel it, and you acknowledge the pain of that younger version of you that didn't get what it wanted. And then. And then what? And then what? Well, then you start to ask questions that are more of the questions of someone who's the captain of their ship, someone who's taking ownership for their life, someone who really wants to be confident, because true confidence is not. I can be Confident when everyone is friendly to me and everyone does what I want, meets all my needs, and then I'll feel confident. I don't know how long it's going to happen for. What's rare, circumstances will come together. How about confidence as an inside job? And confidence is not based upon who is around me, but how I show up and how I interact and how free I am from the perceptions and judgments and demands of others and how free I am from placing demands on other people. Because what I see in these relationships in which someone tells me how bad their mom is or how bad their dad is or how bad whatever is there is, they perceive a lot of judgment or demands upon them from that person, but they're doing just as many demands the other way. My mom should be like this. She shouldn't be like that. She's so this, she's so that. It's the same blame game going the other way. Only, you know, you feel right because it's clearly that they suck. And this one can be really sticky with people. They can fight me on it. They can sort of know you don't understand. You don't understand how bad they are. And yet what do you really want? Because you could be right. And you could convince me that you're right. You could convince other people in your life. You could really make a case in your head. But where does that leave you? Guarded, distant, armored, stuck. Reactive, button pushed. Frustrated. A victim of circumstance, A victim of having the parents that you had or whoever in your life. I mean, people do this with an ex spouse, too, that they divorced 20 years ago. What about if no man, no woman controls you? Can enslave you in that way. Can you feel that? That's the captain of the ship energy. When I have people do this at events, we have them stand up and breathe fully into their chests and adopt the pose of a captain. The master and commander of your fate and your destiny. I am the captain of my ship. I steer. Where I'm going to go, I determine. As you breathe in that and feel that, then you get to start making better decisions. And from this place, when we really are willing to take ownership, the first thing you want to look at is what am I still wanting or needing from this person? And every time I've done this with a client, there's always at least one thing. They're wanting the approval of their older brother. They're wanting their dad to love them. They're wanting their mom to understand them. They're wanting their mom to listen more. They're wanting their or it's not even about how they relate to them. It's like, I want my mom to be more confident in her own life and have better relationships. I want my brother to stop drinking and wanting these things is not the problem. Of course you want your brother to stop drinking. Of course you want your mom to have better relationships or your dad to listen to you more or something. It's needing that to be so. It is the energetic and emotional demand that you're placing on them. You need to be this way in order for me to feel okay. You need to fix that. You need to change that. You need to be this way and you are not. I don't like you. You're not good until you do. And I'm going to judge you now. If you're a nice person, then you don't judge them out loud. You do it in your head and you try to stuff it down. You get back pain every time you visit your family. I don't know where this back pain came from. Must be because I lifted that luggage, right? The old luggage lift back pull, right. Just happens to coincide with family visits. I get these migraines. I don't know why it's always just family visits. I know it's totally weird. Must be the altitude in this city, the weather. So that demand, that needing. You can't see what I'm doing with my fingers, but I'm like grasping right now. It's like grabbing onto something. Can you sense what I'm pointing towards right now? Is there a certain family member that you've been holding on to something? I did this with a lot of different families, especially my parents for many years. I needed my dad to be different. I needed my mom to be different. I would judge them, they should be different. And I would judge the past version of my dad, for example, like, oh, he should have been more. He should have listened to me more and been more emotionally available to me. And then I judged him, same thing, older, you know, in my 20s it was like, oh, I want to have these deep heart to heart conversations with my dad and he can't and that's bad of him. And there was so much pain in that. There's so much needing and demanding and grasping and trying to fix him. And then at some point I started to question and again I did this. I talked about in this episode, really validated that young part and talked about it in therapy and felt that young part and nourished that young part and all that stuff. And that's really powerful healing work. And I also have seen it be kind of a endless loop for people where it's like they do all this healing work, all this healing work, and they still don't have a good relationship with the person. They're still stuck. They still hate their ex wife. They're still bound. I'm like, that's not liberated. That's not free. That's not confidence. That's not being the captain of your ship if you're stuck in something from the past. So we gotta feel that to heal it. And then, though, something else more is needed, which is taking total ownership right now. And that doesn't mean denying the pain of the past or denying that young part of you that was hurt. What it means is saying, that's not gonna control me. What's gonna free myself and therefore free the other person is gonna be for me to let go of these demands or expectations on how they should be. And if there's a way that they're treating me that I don't like, I can communicate about that. I can get up and leave the room. I can say, if we keep talking about. I notice you keep bringing up my ex relationship, and it sounds like in your perspective, I made mistakes there that you don't approve of. And honestly, that doesn't really feel very good. I don't think I want to keep having that conversation, Mom. Well, I just wanted to point this out. I understand. You just want to make sure that I don't do it again. Okay. And I'm going to ask you, like, please don't bring that up. I am not asking for that advice about my last relationship. Well. And if they keep bringing it up, she keeps bringing it up saying, okay, mom, I'm happy to talk with you about something else, but because you keep talking about this, I'm gonna go into the other room, or I'm gonna hang up the phone, or I'm gonna do this thing. But I'll look forward to talking to you again in the future when we can talk about something else. Boom. That's a boundary. It's a loving, skillful boundary. And when you can start to do that kind of thing, all of a sudden, you don't get stuck in this. Oh, but they're this way. And like all that judging and grinding and upset is often that you're not exercising your powers as the captain of your ship now. You're not taking ownership for. I need to communicate. I need to have the. I need to navigate this now. But the cool thing is, when you do start to navigate when you are willing to have those conversations, when you are willing to ask for something different or communicate what you need. You also start to see these people in your life differently as you soften and let go of the judgment and the right, wrong, and the past and just really look at who this person is. I can't tell you how many clients I've worked with who talk about sort of the intimidating parent they had that was so harsh and critical. And if the parent's still alive, I'll ask them, when's the last time you saw your dad? Oh, about three weeks ago or maybe during the holidays or something. I said, okay, what was he like? Well, he's pretty old now. He was sitting on the couch and this and that and said those critical things that he normally says to me. And I was like, okay. And as I start to talk about it, I was like, what did he look like? And how is his voice quality? And does he seem strong? And how big is he compared to you? And I kind of flush out and bring the person into here and now. And at one point, I remember one client is like, yeah, he kind of feels like this sad old man. Not as intimidating as when I was young. I was like, yeah, he kind of sounds like it. And then all of a sudden, this was a really fascinating moment. This client, who'd hated his dad for years, said to me, he's like, you know, I kind of feel sad for him. I was like, huh, Tell me more. He's like, well, he's just. I mean, I can see how he's so. He pushes other people away and keeps other people at a distance. And I blamed him for so many years for doing that to me, but I can see he does. He's done it with my mom. He's done it with my siblings, and he has no friends, as far as I can tell. He seems really guarded and really lonely. I said, yeah, it sounds like it. My client just sat there, and there was sadness there. And you know what sadness is the seeds of in this case? It's compassion. It's related to love. This client is actually feeling love for his dad, which he hadn't for years. He'd armored himself and closed off to love because he was blaming. And it's like, well, I'm not gonna love him until he's different. Well, good luck with that one, because he's maybe never gonna change. And then you can't love because he's that way or she's that way. And again, that's not Freedom to me, then that person controls how open my heart is, how much I can love, how free I can be, and what I can do. No, thank you. For me, total freedom, total confidence is not just being able to walk up and talk to somebody. Total confidence comes down to these core issues, like your key relationships. Relationships with your spouse, your lovers, your kids, your parents, your community, the people closest to you. To be able to express what you want. To be free, emotionally free from someone else's behavior, someone else's history with someone else. So in this moment, I can communicate what I want. I can decide what I want. I can be who I want to be, and I can navigate, and I can handle whatever comes my way. I remember one moment I had with my dad where I've been doing a lot of this work of really just letting go of the demands that I had been placing on him for so many years. And we were visiting. This is back when they lived in Las Vegas. A handful of years ago, my sons were already born. And we took them out there and they lived in the Henderson, which is a suburb of Las Vegas, which I love because it's kind of a bit closer to, like, Red Rocks. And some of the nature around the desert that surrounds Vegas is just beautiful. And I'll go for these long runs and look at the sky. And I loved it. So we're hanging out there. And in the past, whenever I visited my parents, I would always be like. I'd get reactive. I'd be upset, I'd be emotional. I'd, you know, after, like, a day, be like, I need space. I gotta get out of here. And just kind of so much emotional turmoil. And it was so much. I was blaming them, wanting them to be different, and then taking on way too much responsibility for them and their lives and their choices. And so I hadn't visited in a little while, and we showed up with my kids. And it was really interesting because I was sitting there one breakfast, and my dad was talking. He was telling some story about something. And I just started to look at him, and I could see the color of his skin. He's a bit. I have brown skin. He's got a little darker skin. He was born in Pakistan. And I could see the shape of his cheeks and the moles around his eyes. And I was listening to what he was saying, but I was not just, like, intently following every word. Because that was something that sometimes I would get frustrated by. Is like, oh, what's his point? What's he getting to? Or, why is he saying what he's saying he didn't necessarily communicate in the same ways that I do, which are more feeling oriented and heart, all this stuff. And so I was just like receiving him. And in that moment I realized, wow, the reason I'm paying attention to him now, the same way that I pay attention to at that time, my kids were three and five. So my three year old, my five year old is telling me something I'm not. Like, why are you communicating this way? What's the point? What are you trying to get across here? Like, why are you, you should be communicating a different way, right? What? No, a three year old's like, and then this happened and then that. And then I jumped in the building and I saw the, you know, the octopus alien, like, whoa. And then what happened? Right? And I'm just delighting in watching this being express life through its eyes and its mouth. And that's what I started to do with my dad. And I just saw this being who wants connection, who wants attention. And through his own background, his own traumas, his own wounds, is like a little guarded at times or a little prickly at times, and doesn't necessarily know how to open his heart and ask in the same vulnerable ways. But he wants it just like everyone else, just like a flower wants sunlight. And I can be that sunlight. I'm doing it with my son. Why can't I do it with my dad? And so I just started beaming love at him as he was talking. I didn't need anything from him. This is something I often teach is like, instead of looking for the approval of others, what if you are the source of approval? And really I believe that it's actually something divine that's moving through you like the light of the sun, that divine love. Like, you aren't the source of that either. You're just channeling it. You are a conduit for it, an antenna for it. But you can beam it out. And it was a very powerful experience. And I got something in that. I was like, oh. And so I've come back to that and done that many, many times with many different people. And to me, that is confidence, that is freedom. Because then, you know, how my dad is doesn't determine what I can do or how that client is or how that person is, or how that. Whatever, I'm free. Let's look at how you can turn this into an action step for you. Time for action. Action, action. This is kind of a two parter and this is referencing things that I talked about in this episode. So it's not brand new, but I really would encourage you to actually do the things that I'm suggesting in this episode and the other episodes of this show. It's much more effective when you actually do the stuff rather than just think about like, well, that would, in theory, that would be useful, right? So, you know, if there is someone that's bothering you, maybe you're gonna see them in the holidays, maybe you're in their house right now as you listen to this. And I gotta go back out there. Oh God. Oh God. You know, give yourself a little bit of space, go for a walk, whatever. Go to your room and fully bathe that hurting part of you, that inner child that's like, but they didn't give me this. And they're like this and like fully hear it. Let it complain. This is not the time to be a total ownership or be the captain. Let it be a whiny or a victim or hurt. It's like, yes. And just validate the heck out of him or her. Like, yeah, like when a four year old is saying like and they, you know, he always wins in games and he never did this and you like him more than I do, you know, have you ever tried to argue with a 4 year old? That's not true. You don't always win. I don't like him more than you. Yeah. How well does that go, right? It's like, oh, oh, sweetheart, that sounds so painful. You think that I love him more than you and that he always wins at games. That's so painful to see that or think that. Yeah. Ouch, ouch, that hurts, huh? When you see it that way and you breathe and you feel and so you're healing, you're validating, you're working with this younger part of you. If you want to go deeper on this kind of stuff, on how to do that really in depth, check out my book on my own side. You can get it on audible. Lots of processes there. To really work with that young part of you, to eliminate that armoring and that self criticism that can occur. And then though the next step is going to be to be the captain. Now, how do you want to be now? What can you let go of now? What demands are you placing on other people and how can you soften and release those? You might want things to be different or want them to be different, but it's different than needing it and demanding it and kind of holding out and withdrawing and withholding love until they are that way. Because you might be holding onto that and withholding that until the day that they or you die. And sometimes that means a lot of regrets. But something else is available right now, a new opportunity. So I hope this episode serves you. Hope you have fantastic holidays. I look forward to seeing you in our next episode, which we're going to be talking about goals for 2022 and how to make the next year that we're coming up on amazing. So I can't wait to be with you then and until we speak again, may have the courage to be who you are and to know on a deep level that you are awesome. Thanks for listening to Shrink for the shy guy with Dr. Aziz. If you know anyone who can benefit from what you've just heard, please let them know and send them a link to shrinkforthshyguy.com for free blogs, e books, and training videos related to overcoming shyness and increasing confidence, go to socialconfidencecenter.com.